Welcome to FUNCRYPTA, the tardigrade project funded by the BMBF Framework Programme "Biotechnologie - Chancen nutzen und gestalten", "QuantPro - Quantitative Analyse zur Beschreibung dynamischer Prozesse in lebenden Systemen". The scientific objectives of FUNCRYPTA are:(i) to identify genes, enzymes and their products, whose value for stabilizing cells has been documented, on entering, during and after the anhydrobiotic stage in tardigrades, ii) to relate known dynamic cellular procedures during the anhydrobiotic stage in order to understand the background of anhydrobiotic changes, and(iii) to develop mathematical methods to understand and quantify mechanisms, dynamics and driving forces of anhydrobiosis in order to predict changes and to provide a scientific baseline for further investigation and development of products required to stabilize cells. ... [Information of the supplier]
I am interested in the structure and evolution of animal genomes, with a particular focus on the genomes of non-model organisms. In my group, we use modern sequencing technologies to generate expressed sequence tag and genome sequence data for non-vertebrates (such as earthworms, nematodes and tardigrades), and analyse these with a variety of bioinformatics tools (including many we have written in house). In particular we are interested in the evolution of operons and trans-splicing in nematodes, the responses of soil invertebrates such as earthworms to heavy metals and pollutants, the origins of gene novelty, the deep phylogeny of animals and the evolution of development in the moulting animals such as tardigrades. We are also developing DNA barcoding techniques to identify meiofauna and other hard-to-identify taxa. We have collaborations with a wide range of colleagues round the world working on beautiful small invertebrates and their evolution. The Blaxter Lab also houses the School of Biological Sciences Sequencing Service, an internationally renowned unit that provides both traditional capillary Sanger sequencing and next generation SOLEXA and 454 sequencing to the University, NERC science and other users. The SBSSS has ABI3730, SOLEXA 1G and 454 GSFLX instrumentation. (from http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/biology/people?id=mblaxter&cw_xml=homepage.php) ... [Miscellaneous as indicated]
This dataset contains 99 genes and comes from Catalina Betancur's review published in Brain Research in 2011 (Betancur, 2011). Different genetic and genomic disorders in which ASDs have been described as one of the possible manifestations were collected. Genes, CNVs and linkage regions associated with autism were searched from literature and curated. Six categories of literatures were included in our collection: genome-wide association studies, expression profiling, genome-wide CNV studies, linkage analysis, low-scale genetic association studies and other low-scale gene studies. Representative meta-data about key clinical and demographic characteristics was collected. ... [Information of the supplier]